Case Study: West Hills Construction, Inc. achieves $200,000+ in cost savings and optimized solar designs with Autodesk Digital Prototyping

West Hills Construction, Inc. Meets Sustainable Building Challenges with the Autodesk® Solution for Digital Prototyping

West Hills Construction, Inc., a California-based company with a fast‑growing energy division specializing in photovoltaic arrays, wind turbines and advanced energy storage, faced the challenge of designing a one‑of‑a‑kind sustainable building that maximized PV panel performance while delivering accurate cost estimates. To meet this challenge the company adopted the Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping—using Autodesk products such as AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Vault Manufacturing, Showcase, 3ds Max, and Maya—and relied on Autodesk training to accelerate implementation.

Using Autodesk Digital Prototyping, West Hills prepared 2D site layouts in AutoCAD, imported them into Inventor to deploy piping, electrical conduits and control panels, and used 3D shadow‑casting to optimize solar array spacing; Vault Manufacturing managed data and Showcase/3ds Max/Maya produced high‑fidelity sales presentations. The Autodesk solution helped the company capture immediate feedback to avoid costly change orders, reduce reliance on outside architects, win new business, and achieve measurable savings—West Hills estimates Autodesk software may have prevented a misquote of roughly $200,000 and saved hundreds of thousands more through accurate estimating.

West Hills Construction, Inc.

Rusty Wood

Vice President